Italo Brutalo – Heartware

A tale of paramount love for machines and the inextinguishable power of subjugation that lies in these button-studded boxes teeming with cabled bowels that feel so intimidating to the uninitiated, Italo Brutalo’s longed-for debut album «Heartware» is a 12-track voyage across 25 years of intense synth collecting, fiddling, composing and endless loving for audio synthesis and the art of how robots make human bodies jack. Throughout the twelve cuts that compose «Heartware», a feeling of retro-gazing, candidly playful glee prevails. Looking right in the eye of the era when dazzling flipper visuals and static-filled VHS glitches reigned supreme, Italo Brutalo invites us to witness first-hand his own textbook smorgasbord of fast-wheeling arpeggios and vocodized hoodoo («Heartware», «Reach Horizon»), dystopian digital sunsets by the beach («I Feel Lonely»), early hip-hop-informed whackin’ n’ thumpin’ («Analog Bars») and the slo but hard churn of a robot heist score («Nobody Moves»).

A lush tapestry of woozy exotic pads set in contrast with a deft and aggro drum programming («As Above So Below»), followed by a new-beat oriented hammer-drop that shall leave no raver unscathed («Heat of the Knight»), Italo Brutalo shifts the scope to radical effect whilst maintaining that cohesive headspace flush with the iconic 80s-to-90s-sourced assets. The hardware used in the making of «Heartware» is obviously the star here, and the inner sleeve pays tribute to that: the ideas behind the album have been there waiting to find their way out for over twenty years!